In his intimate and profoundly moving Jewish family history—a memoir of displacement, prejudice, hope, despair, and love—award-winning New York Times columnist Roger Cohen turns a compassionate and discerning eye on the legacy of his own forebears. Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing through to the present day, Cohen tracks his family’s story of repeated upheaval, four generations of wandering from pre-Shoah Lithuania to apartheid-era South Africa, and then to England, the United States, and Israel.

At the heart of Cohen’s story is the powerful bond he had with his mother, the “girl” forced to travel far from home. Tormented by a deep depression yet stoic in her struggle, she embodied her son’s complex inheritance. Graceful, honest, and sweeping, The Girl from Human Street is a remarkable chronicle of the quest for belonging across generations, a gripping saga, and a resonant portrait of identity and memory in the modern age.

Roger Cohen is a columnist for The New York Times, where he has worked since 1990: as a correspondent in Paris and Berlin, and as bureau chief in the Balkans covering the Bosnian war (for which he received an Overseas Press Club prize). He was named a columnist in 2009. He became foreign editor on 9/11, overseeing Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage in the aftermath of the attack. His columns appear twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. His previous books include Soldiers and Slaves and Hearts Grown Brutal. He lives in New York City.

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